LIVIN ON A PRAYER
Rejoint: oct. 2017
Messages: 6,486
Mentions "j'aime": 6,459
Idk how I missed this.
Echoing sentiments above about McLeod being the #3C, but I'll take it two steps further and suggest Ennis over Neal and Haas over Shore. There's no upside to Neal over Ennis: they score similarly, neither player is physically-dominant, and Neal is as slow as February's molasses. Shore is a genuine black-hole in terms of chances against. Haas as the #4C is a better option and pushes Khaira into Shore's spot. Better fit on the PK too as it allows both of the top units to go lefty-righty between Khaira-Archibald and McLeod-Haas. Nugent-Hopkins, Yamamoto, and Draisaitl can rotate in as Tippett sees fit.
Kris Russell has lost his position in the lineup outright. Jones shouldn't come out even though Tippett will happily play an inferior player in games that matter.
I have this suspicion that Tippett might go with Nurse-Bear for his top pairing. Maybe not immediately against the Jets, but definitely against the Leafs. If we go by the format of one defensive defender and one puck-mover per pair, it would look like this:
Nurse - Bear
Jones - Larsson
Kulikov - Barrie
I only bring that up because Tippett's religiously gone to the Nurse-Bear pairing during crunch time, and every second of a playoff game is crunch time. If the Oilers are in need of a timely goal, I could see Tippett reuniting Nurse-Barrie along with Draisaitl-McDavid, but it should remain a situational pairing.